Marketing Archives
Here you’ll find a collection of articles published under the Marketing category.
Who’s making money on the Web?
By Bruce LaFetra on June 23, 2008
While failure for the high-tech entrepreneur is less likely to result in death, the parallels between the Gold Rush and the current Web-based economy are many. In both cases, participants must to adapt to a new way of life, with new rules. Or rather, no pre-existing, fixed rules.
Silicon Valley’s famous tolerance of entrepreneurial failure has its roots more than 150 years ago in the Gold Rush when more than 90,000 people made their way to California in the two years following John Marshall’s discovery of gold near Sacramento in January, 1848. By 1854, more than 300,000—representing more than one percent of the total population of the United States at the time—had come west in search of fortune.
It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s Community!
By Nilofer Merchant on June 23, 2008
Last Friday, I went to a party in Atherton and met two CEOs who used the word “community” as their secret sauce.
Rubicon Influencer Marketing Event
By Marsha Keeffer on May 27, 2008
A Rubicon Sparkler at the beginning of the season saw CEO Nilofer Merchant presenting a discussion on influencer marketing with Nick Hayes, co-author of Influencer Marketing: Who Really Influences Your Customers.
Don’t Throw Your Influencers Under the Bus Just Yet
By Michael Mace on February 19, 2008
One thing the marketing industry and the tech industry have in common is that they’re both periodically swept by fad ideas (call them memes if you want to sound hip) that enchant everyone to the point of obsession. That obsession then produces a backlash that causes everyone to swing the other way and completely dismiss the original idea. We’re going through one of those cycles right now with the idea of influencer marketing. As usual, the reality is somewhere in between the hype and the backlash—influencer marketing is not the be-all that some people made it out to be, but it’s not bunk either.
Making Marketing Matter
By Nilofer Merchant on January 11, 2008
Let’s face the facts.
Marketing isn’t what it once was. The pall cast by the Web 2.0 era where consumers are the beginning and end and marketers are no longer leading the brand, the demand creation process has gone awry, and to the point that corporate confidence has eroded for marketing’s function as a performance driver.
Winning Business Models: Innovation vs. Invention
By Bruce LaFetra on January 7, 2008
Invention is the classic way to build a successful company. However, invention is much harder for a mature company or a mature technology. Business model innovation is an attractive option in many cases as a way to differentiate an offer, improve profitability or both. Below are five emerging business models.
When it Comes to Customer Experience Design, Satisfaction is Sufficient
By Harry Max on November 29, 2007
In the same way that hope is not a strategy, customer experience design is not an accident.
Many companies can miss the mark when it comes to delivering what their customers desire, but most fail in what I might call a blind spot – they fail deliver on their customers’ tacit demands? Those demands are essential needs and involve how the experience of purchase or adoption or use is experienced.
With a few obvious exceptions, such as dealing with Apple, I’m shocked and amazed when my (admittedly low) expectations are exceeded by a customer experience I would characterize as truly delightful. And I’m not unusual in that way. Most consumers will be delighted if a company even comes close to delivering on a customer experience, not just a product.
Marry Sony? I think not.
By Nilofer Merchant on November 1, 2007
Sony loves me. It’s true. They recently found my email address and invited me to become a Sony Brand Ambassador. You can imagine how thrilled I was.
With Our Sincerest Apologies to the Prairie Dogs
By Don Frischmann on November 1, 2007
What’s happening? Have business leaders suddenly abdicated control? Are meeting financial expectations overtaking common sense and good business judgment? Or, have corporations lost touch with their customers?
Striking Gold: The Top Five Myths about the Small Business Market
By Bruce LaFetra on September 18, 2007
To many companies, the small and medium business (SMB) market represents the golden vein of market opportunity. Compared to the Fortune 1000 with—that’s right, still 1000 companies—SMB is a huge market with 8 million traditional businesses (plus another 32.5 million home-based businesses). The market is so big and seemingly inviting that the long string of previous failures just adds to the appeal. With so many big software and hardware companies targeting the SMB market, including some of our clients, this is a great time to take a look at some of the popular myths surrounding it.
Old School. New School. And How They Relate to Marketing
By Nilofer Merchant on September 18, 2007
We all want to be new school and know that the latest top hit song (via iTunes) is a song called SOS by Jonas Brothers. I had to look that up. Because what I pay attention to the most are things I already love. While I’d like to be super hip, the songs that run through my head are more like “The Way We Were” if I’m feeling melancholy, “Sweet Home Alabama” if I feel good, or Madonna’s “Like a Virgin” if I feel, ya know, sassy.
What does this have to do with marketing, you ask?
Aptitude vs. Attitude: HP Knows it Takes Consistency
By Marsha Keeffer on September 17, 2007
HP watchers have been on quite a ride over the past few years. It’s been full of thrills, change, some major bumps, and, finally, a financial performance that has shareholders applauding. How did they get to this point? There are many explanations, but I like the contribution that consistent product messaging has made to their new situation.
Twittering Away
By Marsha Keeffer on August 16, 2007
Spring brings the South by Southwest (SXSW) interactive, film and music festivals and conferences to Austin, Texas. This year, the events also spawned new interest in Twitter, the first microblog and originally an R&D project of Odeo. Tech celebrities at SXSW made heavy use of Twitter and created tremendous attention for it in their blogs and in the media. Winning the Web Award in the blog category increased the hype around it, though some users find the 140 character limitation difficult to work with.
Web Strategy Needs to Create an Experience, not a Transaction
By Nilofer Merchant on August 16, 2007
For each era, there are new rules. In the web world today, marketing online has new rules. Marketing is no longer about awareness online, but about creating an experience for the consumer or customer.
I propose the new marketing goal with online marketing is about engagement. Personal engagement. Connection from user to company. Customers like what you help them do. Your offerings are appealing and designed around and with them. Customers are delighted because they can exchange usages with one another and therefore find more ways to use your gadget. Joy of engagement brings them back again and again.
Digital Slices: Atomizing the Business of Segmentation
By Nilofer Merchant on June 11, 2007
Segmentation has always been a key part of marketing. Sorting customers into appropriate segments allows business and marketing types to filter ideas, glean intelligence, set prices, and decide what to offer and what to toss.
Segmentation also allows successful companies to produce just the right thing to address the needs of different slices of the market.
Affinity is Different From Love
By Nilofer Merchant on June 10, 2007
Affinity is described by Merriam-Webster as 1.) an attraction to or liking for something, and 2.) likeness based on relationship or causal connection.
Customers may like many different companies, but when it comes to affinity, there are few firms that make the grade. So what is it, this word affinity, and how is it different from love?
Consumers to Corporations: Where’s My Experience?
By Marsha Keeffer on April 3, 2007
With a print job deadline looming, I Googled on Kinko’s, figuring I’d get their number and call before I went over. Clicking again for more information, I was faced with the FedEx landing page. Suddenly, my services and solution were reduced to 8-point type—the most subsidiary of subsidiaries—and the services I wanted were nowhere to be found.
The Devil Dials Prada
By Marsha Keeffer on March 5, 2007
Knowing and understanding various ways to drive growth is tied directly to knowing what market (or segment) you’re serving. If Motorola, Nokia and other firms in the communications industry view themselves as handset makers, that’s actually just the start. For a certain customer segment, handset makers are in the accessories business. Apple’s iPhone is the latest proof that the market is not just about phones but about lifestyle. Apple’s phones are not even in user’s hands yet, but it’s a powerful signal to the industry—ignore design and fashion at your own risk.
Has Yahoo Lost Its Mojo?
By Marsha Keeffer on January 4, 2007
The jury is still out. There are those who believe Yahoo has lost the clarity of vision needed to complete with a juggernaut like Google, and an increasingly hungry Microsoft. They’re convinced Yahoo has lost the pulse of its community. Other observers believe Yahoo can recover from its recent stumbles, if it recaptures the cachet it once had.
Let’s quickly review some of the facts. Yahoo is battling slowing sales growth, a slumping stock price and a steady stream of executive departures. In spite of these troubles, it is still the dominant player on most of the web. Yahoo is the most visited website on the Internet today with more than 412 million unique users. Since November, 2006, it’s been battling MySpace for the title “Top US Visited Website.”
Who Controls Brands Now? The Rise of 360° Marketing
By Marsha Keeffer on January 2, 2007
At the most recent meeting of the American Marketing Association, Ad Age reports, “The speakers at the podium kept changing, but their words remained the same. One after the other, the marketing world leaders took to the stage and declared that it’s time to give up control and accept that consumers now control their brands.”
Of course, in some ways, they always have. A brand has always only been as good as a consumers’ experience of it. The difference today is that consumers have lots of ways of communicating those experiences and trust each other’s views instead of marketers’ overt sales pitches. A more interactive environment gave them the tools to be better informed and less susceptible to the traditional one-way communication model. Consequently, they are influencing marketing strategies as never before.
Cluetrain 2007: Ten Commandments for Communicating with People Online
By Michael Mace on November 8, 2006
Seven years ago, Rick Levine, Christopher Locke, Doc Searls, and David Weinberger posted an online document called the Cluetrain Manifesto. It laid out 95 principles for communicating with customers online. The Manifesto created big stir, was signed by a lot of people working in the tech industry, and turned into a book that sold well at the height of the Internet bubble. But since then it has been largely forgotten.
Seven years later, the Manifesto is a mixed bag. Some of its maxims are seriously out of date, and a few are just plain wrong. There are also some things missing. Because the document is long, and parts of it are badly off target, we’re reluctant to refer any of our clients to it today.
However, parts of the Manifesto are just plain brilliant, and deserve to be spray-painted on the walls of corporations around the world.
Understanding the full impact of the web
By Michael Mace on September 27, 2006
This will probably sound crazy, but despite all the hype about Web 2.0 and web startups, the most common mistake we see tech companies making with regard to the web is underestimating its long-term impact on their businesses.
I’m not sure why this is. Maybe it’s a reaction to the Internet bubble — because the short-term effects of the web were oversold, people also tuned out the long-term effects. I know some companies are so settled in their current franchises that they don’t understand how vulnerable they are over time to the changes taking place in the marketplace. Others take the web very seriously in one respect, but don’t understand its full impact across their entire company.
To understand what the web is going to do to our businesses, you have to look at it as both an application development platform and a new communication medium. Either change alone would have huge impacts, but the two together are especially powerful. Here’s what we see happening in each area, followed by some ideas on what they mean for businesses.
Give Me That Thing Called Love
By Nilofer Merchant on September 6, 2006
Do your customers look at your products with the same eager anticipation as they once did? Have your customers stayed “married” to you? Would you consider them still in love—or waiting it out until someone better comes along?
Don’t Be the Dinosaur Brought Down by Mosquitoes
By Nilofer Merchant on September 5, 2006
We work in Silicon Valley… and there are a few hundred new acronyms and technologies introduced each year that we need to understand. Being a trusted advisor means that clients need us to be really smart, on top of the latest trends, and interpreting what really matters so we can engage with them to design new, winning business strategies.
Ecosystems: Build a strong(er) one
By Nilofer Merchant on September 4, 2006
In grade school, one of the key determinants of popularity on the playground was how quickly you were selected when the time came to choose up sides for basketball, baseball or soccer. In the same way, the developing business model for the next ten years depends hugely on which set of developer and ecosystem partners pick you.
However, unlike grade school, you might have more ability to influence this selection.
Go-to-market Mix in the Web 2.0 Era
By Nilofer Merchant on September 3, 2006
It’s been 40+ years since E. Jerome McCarthy published Basic Marketing, the business book that introduced the “4 Ps” (product, price, place/distribution and promotion) to the world. While the categories still hold true, what was once considered the leading edge has drastically evolved. Web 2.0 has also impacted the paradigm by changing what product definitions look like, and how things that are sold as ‘free’ can make money. So while the 4 Ps are a good start as buckets, let’s update them for today’s era and discuss what you need to be doing to keep your mix both relevant and impactful.
Here’s my take on what’s happening… and some ideas on what you need to do to win your market.
Blue Plate Special, a la Carte, or All You Can Eat
By Nilofer Merchant on September 2, 2006
Do you remember a time when most meals were the sit down, full-service, dessert-included kind? Even if all you wanted was a cup of soup or a simple salad, you were offered the blue plate special with everything at one price. Then the culinary folks came up with small plates, a la carte items, tastings, pairing menus, buffets and the like. Whew! Choices—who knew!
Stepping up to the Microphone
By Nilofer Merchant on September 1, 2006
Can you imagine what it would be like to charge 20-200% more than your competitor and own market category dominance? This final part of the Bootcamp series focuses on ways your organization can increase its economic power.
Success isn’t an equation that looks like this:
Great Product + Advertising + Price Point + Distribution = Success
Out With the Old Process, In With the New - Completely
By Bruce LaFetra on August 7, 2006
Remember Webvan? Those pretty brown trucks. We saw one all scuffed up and worn down by the side of the road today and it perfectly symbolized the promise of an Internet-based grocery company that never made it. Lots of theories on its failure have been created, but I am always amazed that most people fail to recognize one of the biggest factors that doomed Webvan. It is a lesson that too few people seem to recognize when running their own business units.
Metrics: Getting Rid of the Voodoo in Marketing
By Nilofer Merchant on August 7, 2006
It’s time for marketers to get out of the realm of voodoo and spin, to create a more defensible position for budget dollars and develop a more secure “seat at the table” by being the business champions they are.
Sound too good to be true? I think not. The high-tech industry is finally catching up with more established consumer businesses in the areas of metrics and accountability. This is not a marketing trend per se, but a marketing “practice” trend, which is just as important. This is a must-have going forward. I believe marketing can be a data-driven, metrics-focused art.
Big Changes Coming to Retail Promotions
By Bruce LaFetra on August 7, 2006
Changes to the retail landscape continue with OfficeMax and Dell being the latest companies announcing that they are getting out of the mail-in rebate business.
You Have Less Credibility
By Nilofer Merchant on June 1, 2006
I hate to be the one to break this to you, but you have less credibility than you once did. It’s nothing personal, mind you. There’s something bigger going on that’s impacting all high-tech companies. Because of it, you’ll want to shift the way you approach the market, before your competition whips past you.
Rebates, Redemptions and Breakage: Some Things you Should Know About Mail-in Rebates
By Bruce LaFetra on June 1, 2006
It’s hard to make broad generalizations about rebate programs because most organizations refuse to share their data with researchers or peers — if they even have good data. As a result, many marketers base decisions on a set of widespread, but empirically false assumptions:
- Larger rebates increase both sales and redemption rates
- Increasing effort requirements decrease redemption rates
- Shorter redemption deadlines decrease the redemption rate
Two recent studies, by the Promotion Marketing Association (PMA) and the University of Florida, debunk the conventional wisdom for each of the broadly-held assumptions above.
Fighting With Four Swords
By Nilofer Merchant on April 17, 2006
Rubicon has a defense practice, which we would love to call "Fighting With Four Swords: The Art of Competitive Play." Unfortunately, that’s too long to put on our business cards along with our other three practices (define, design, optimize). So instead, we say “defend” and use the long description when writing articles or blog entries.
Marketing is Reality
By Michael Mace on April 17, 2006
In a recent meeting with a client, we brainstormed on what to do about an upcoming product announcement by Microsoft. The new Microsoft product will substantially increase the competitive pressure on our client, and in typical Redmond fashion the press and analysts have been briefed about it for months. Even though the product won’t ship until this summer, our client is in effect already competing with it.
Getting the Low Down that Matters
By Nilofer Merchant on February 1, 2006
Do you know what your customers are thinking? Do they love you or hate you? Are they in the market considering other options right this very minute?
Is Loyalty About the “First Click,” Or Does That Happen Much Later?
By Nilofer Merchant on February 1, 2006
That’s the question that’s been banging around our brains since reading an article on the front page of the Wall Street Journal on Microsoft and PC makers negotiating on the “first-boot sequence.” The article argues that in the first five to ten minutes after an OS is first installed, most consumers choose software and services they will often use for a lifetime. The comments from Microsoft suggest they think “loyalty is won at set-up.”
Customization Marketing Done Wrong
By Nilofer Merchant on January 1, 2006
When Mike Mace joined Rubicon, the rest of us got a chance to see a grown man wear funky white tennis shoes to work, and well, get away with it. Mike has been wearing Jack Purcell shoes as long as Nilofer has known him (15 years). They are practically part of his personality. Turns out that you can get these custom made to your liking, online. So when Christmas rolled around, this inspired a present. Initially, we thought Nike (which now owns the Jack Purcell brand) was cooler than cool, but as we worked our way through the process we found five areas that “broke” an otherwise fabulous idea, and inspires some lessons for good personalized marketing.
The Difference Between Google and Yahoo, and What It Means to You
By Michael Mace on January 1, 2006
The press sometimes depicts Google and Yahoo as head to head competitors, but if you work closely with the two companies you’ll notice substantial differences between them. These differences affect the sorts of partnerships you can create with them, and the sorts of competition you can expect if you end up competing with them.
Sequoia VC Evangelizes ‘AskJeeves Meets Google’ Market Trend
By Nilofer Merchant on November 1, 2005
Mark Kvamme, one of the true blue-bloods of Silicon Valley, recently shared his take on what will fuel the next wave of technology innovations. Mark, as some of you might know is the former CEO of CKS, and is a current partner at Sequoia Capital, focusing on the same markets as Rubicon, the Software and Services space.
His premise is this: content will drive the next wave of technology innovation, because organizations fail to access 90% of the content in their organization.
Microsoft to Use Licensing to Drive Enterprise Penetration
By Nilofer Merchant on November 1, 2005
Microsoft just announced changes intended to reconcile new technology and old licensing models, effective December 1. Microsoft will now calculate the cost of server software products by the number of running instances of that product on any given server, rather than the number of physical processors contained in that server.
Licensing Trends: Software Vendors vs. Enterprises
By Nilofer Merchant on November 1, 2005
While vendors are trying to move customers to term licensing (subscriptions), enterprise customers continue to sing the praises of concurrency due to its cost savings and easier management. According to research by Macrovision, subscriptions or term licensing will be offered by a majority of software vendors for the first time in 2006. By 2007, the forecast is that fully two-thirds of software vendors will offer term licensing even though 57% of enterprises prefer perpetual licensing. Moreover, by better than 2-to-1, enterprises see concurrent licensing as preferred over seat-based licensing. Concurrency is the only licensing model to see an increase in customer preference during the past year, so we are already looking forward to the hallway conversations next year.
In the longer term, utility pricing looks to address the needs of both software vendors and enterprises, but utility pricing is clearly not ready for prime time yet.
Channel Optimization: Are you paying your channel too much?
By Nilofer Merchant on October 1, 2005
Given the constant squeeze on end-user prices, increased channel competition, and investor demands for steady—if not increasing—earnings, it is hard to believe that many high-tech companies have an untapped source of additional profits on current business.
In a recent worldwide channel economics study, Rubicon studied industry giants like Microsoft, Symantec, Apple and Macromedia, as well as their top channel partners, and found that each vendor, in their own way, was leaving money—profits—on the table. Neither the channel nor the vendor was using their channel investments optimally to bring products to market. The Rubicon study found that the investments many companies make in the channel do not prevent loss of mindshare or improve returns. Most importantly, the study revealed that channel economics are changing in ways that challenge conventional wisdom.
Rubicon in the News
By Nilofer Merchant on October 1, 2005
Nilofer Merchant will be speaking at SoftSummit on October 11 as part of a panel on Innovation. Learn more. Nilofer Merchant’s article on Value Innovation is a featured in the September 26 Sand Hill.com newsletter. You can read the article…